My friend’s daughter Maisie, who just turned a year old on October 5th, was recently diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). Her parents, Cody and Mikayla Staebler, first noticed something was wrong when she couldn’t shake a fever and even after being tested for everything they could think of the doctors sent them home with the reasoning of, “babies just get fevers”. Her fever seemed to disappear for a few days but then came back and was more persistent. Mikayla then noticed a small lump on Maisie’s thigh. She called her doctor and was told it’s probably a bug bite and that “babies get fevers it’s not a concern”. On the morning of October 30th, Maisie woke up with a limp on the leg with the bump, so her parents took her to the ER. They did the same tests and said she seemed fine and once again said “babies get fevers”. Her strong parents demanded more answers and refused to leave with out focusing more on the cause of her leg pain. The doctors then did a blood test and her white blood cell count was abnormally high. The doctors said they’d prefer Maisie to see a pediatric doctor, so they transferred them to Doernbecker. Once admitted they did even more tests. On October 31st, 2021 the doctors gave Mikayla and Cody the worst news you can hear as a parent that their baby girl had leukemia. They said while this is terrifying it is the “best type” of Leukemia we could hope for in this situation with a survival rate of well over 90%. But hearing about “survival rates” and “fighting cancer” pertaining to your one year old is truly the most heart wrenching thing you can ever hear as a parent! Maisie needs to stay at Doernbecker for the next month for her daily chemo treatments. Her parents are staying in Portland and because of Covid restrictions taking turns staying in the hospital with her. The cost of food is already adding up on top of the hospital bills and after this month of a hospital stay they will be needing to drive to Portland and back 2-3 times a week and living an hour away will become quite expensive. Please consider donating to this family who is currently living every parent’s worst nightmare. This could help them have a peace of mind with this big financial burden, so they can focus on their baby girl! Cody and Mikayla plan to use this money to cover hospital bills, food, and gas and whatever is left after they plan to donate it to children’s cancer research.